Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?
Um. Yes. I probably should have studied acting. I enjoy performing very much, and have since I was a child. I like being someone else, whether doing music or speaking. Most of my speaking has been teaching or training. I enjoy it. Perhaps that’s why I’m a corporate trainer and spent much of my life singing in choruses and harmony groups.
My outgoing persona was out tonight.
Still, I prefer a friendly audience. Usually that’s not an issue. I mostly sang to friends or people I had things in common with, and I just make the people I’m training into a friendly audience with my relentless friendliness. Who IS that woman?
Here I’m orating at the Grand Canyon, or pretending to be
It’s been a lot harder lately for me to get out in public and “perform.” I admit that the reason I’m so “on” at parties is that it’s more like fake performance Suna is there, not real anxiety-ridden Suna.
My friend Debra and I about to launch into holiday songs. Not really. We just dressed similarly.
I succeeded tonight in doing okay at the Master Naturalist holiday party. I was probably overly outgoing, but I had fun taking pictures and being silly. I’d been really nervous beforehand. I think it’s because I haven’t ventured into a group of people who aren’t all close to me since…October I think.
I’d missed friends like Don and Cindy.
But it went well and I was pleased with the fun, good food, and gift swap (I got a cool hand-carved whale!). Whew. I did it. I’m tired now, like any introvert is after mingling, but I feel ok. People were kind to me, too.
Yummy food. The pork was amazing.
You’ve all been very kind after yesterday’s dumping of some of my issues. I do want to say we will have enough land for horse pastures; just not how I’d wanted it. I wasn’t dry clear. Thank you all for caring.
It rained and rained and I worked and worked today, so I didn’t have any “adventures” to write about. I was glad to see the blog prompt for today, since it fit in with my day’s activities.
Still rainy
Have you guessed my favorite subject in school? It’s pretty obvious, though after sixth grade there were really two.
Since I have the condition where I’m just driven to write (hypergraphia, self diagnosed), it’s no surprise that I loved English grammar and composition. I still do, though I’ve cut out all the convoluted sentences and polysyllabic vocabulary of my youth, at least in public.
I don’t have any photos from today, so consider these old collages as writing prompts.
There’s nothing I liked better than to be assigned to diagram me some sentences or write a nice, juicy composition. Term papers with lots o’ footnotes were also my idea of fun. In high school the only way I got a boyfriend was to find the guy who liked fancy sentences as much as I did (he’s an English/film studies professor now).
How do you see yourself as a writer?
But I did have another passion, which, probably not coincidentally, involved arranging words in certain ways. It was my second love, choral music. I loved how chords worked, harmonies intertwined, and crescendos followed decrescendos. While writing was a solo activity, chorus involved working with others, blending and matching in tone.
I’m the red dress in the tenor section.
I learned a lot about discipline, learning rules so you can later break them, cooperation, and vulnerability through these activities. Sharing your writing and performing in public are not easy until you get a lot of practice and learn to take feedback constructively. (My high school chorus teacher and grad school advisor are still alive and could tell you how much I had to learn in that area.) (Note that there’s still work to be done.)
I feel like the kid in this one.
Thanks for being an audience for my blog. It’s a nice break from job aids and meeting minutes, which I wrote all day today. I’m lucky to have a place to be a “real,” person, not an influencer or manufactured celebrity.
These SoulCollage cards can make you think.
Go out and read some other great blogs by real people! I love learning what I have in common with others, as well as our differences. I learn a lot, and you can, too.
We learn more if we look. Right now looking can be hard.
List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.
Oh good, here’s a question that I don’t have to be as careful answering as yesterday’s (thanks for the positive feedback). I know the things I’d love to do if it weren’t for that pesky needing an income thing.
Knitting Teacher. I truly loved the years I spent teaching people to knit at a yarn shop. I’ve been teaching knitting and crocheting informally most of my life, but I really got a system going there toward the end. It’s so rewarding to taking someone from being sure they’re unable to learn something straight to competency. And once you can knit, you’ve always got something to do!
Here’s a good starter project.
Nature Interpreter. This is a real job. You share with people about the nature around them, help them learn to see things they might not have noticed, and show them the unique qualities of the place where they are. You can do it as a volunteer in some parks, but Milam County lacks State Parks. Maybe the Ranchería Grande site folks are working on that’s in this county will need interpretation.
I could show folks that they aren’t just walking through a field of weeds, but that the asters are alive with tiny fuzzy bee flies.
Backup Singer. I love(d) to sing. I like being in front, but it’s especially fun to do harmonies behind a singer. I miss performing. I miss the teamwork and cooperation of being in a band, vocal group, or chorus. And sometimes backup singers get to travel! I love staying in hotels, too!
This is the group my friend Sharon is in, the Studebakers. They take turns singing lead and harmonies.
Given a fourth choice I’d be a field worker in biology. I’d get to both be outside and explore nature AND write scientific papers! I actually do know how to do that.
My life has always been filled with music. I started “training” my voice trying to imitate Julie Andrews before I started school. We only had one album, Mary Poppins. I sang in choir from 6th grade through high school (where it was chorus, because I guess choir is for church).
I was not the greatest singer, but I was very helpful in choruses, because I could read music (2 years of piano lessons, which I sucked at), I was loud, and I could sing any part but bass, thanks to my range. And I loved harmony, oh so much.
You can see why I sang tenor. Not a lot of dudes.
I also was crazed for folk and rock music, so I kept on singing with Linda Ronstadt and her cohorts. I liked music that was complex but clean, whether classical or rock opera (mmm, Quadrophenia…want me to sing the whole thing?)
High school singing. My brother is at left.
I didn’t sing for many years after high school, due to hard feelings with my music teacher. I don’t remember what it was about. But I sang informally with friends and wished I didn’t have such fat, stubby non-guitar-suited fingers. Listening was always part of life. I wish I had my albums.
I loved to sing. This is our folk group with Eddie Collins added.
I started a second round of singing in my late thirties through 50s. I learned a lot singing in the choir at the Unitarian Universalist church we attended. Our choir director was a great teacher and extremely patient with the motley crew who showed up. It ranged from professionals to first-time singers. It was a lot of fun, and a great outlet for my soul. Harmony is just the best.
Church choir, maybe the concert when my voice quit.
I also worked with the church-sponsored folk music coffeehouse. I met many wonderful Americana artists who are still my friends. For a few years, my dear friend Jeff, a great musician, lived with me and the boys. We had CDs recorded at our house!
Our friend Jeff Tveraas
I think that was great education for my kids, especially the one that became a professional musician. During those years we all heard a lot of live music!
Jeff entertaining a crowd
At some point two of my friends from church and I started learning songs and playing together. Both Bill and Austin sang well and were (are) great guitar players. It was fulfilling to work out harmonies and figure out what songs worked best for our voices. We didn’t perform in public much but it was great fun when we did.
Our band, plus Lee
Later, we joined our church band, and the opportunity to make music with my kids and husband was very special. We ended up doing songs that weren’t suited to me, but I kept trying until we moved to the ranch.
The church band. I’m a-singin’
Probably the most musical fun I ever had was singing with two different choruses in Austin. I got to learn hard choral music and sing with people who were much better singers than me. It was like being the smartest person in high school only to discover you are average in college. Or in my case, grad school. I loved learning the difficult pieces and learning from others!
I can’t forget 6 years as a band mom following my kids around. That counts as music (this is the Cameron band years ago).
My singing stopped abruptly when I damaged my vocal cords singing the highest parts in Judas Maccabaeus. It was fun until I realized I’d list B, C, and D above middle C. That messed up most songs. I was the only second soprano in our church Christmas program and when I tried to sing, nothing came out. I was very embarrassed.
My friends Jim and Sherry, folks I met during the coffeehouse years.
Luckily, I have a very musical family, so for a few more years I got to enjoy Lee and my sons playing. We’d have jams on holidays, and Declan would play his rock songs and classical guitar for me. I truly enjoyed that.
This is my son in a band called Sherry. He’s still in bands with some of these folks.
But. Sigh. Lee’s hands have stopped working. He has pretty bad arthritis. That’s so hard for a lifelong bass player. He played since he was a teen, toured with bands, and worked in radio. He still listens a lot.
This early band Declan was in has folks who’ve moved on to do great things.
I don’t. I probably will eventually, but much of my favorite music makes me sad. I’ve lost my mandolin playing son, and I don’t get to hear Declan anymore. The last time I heard him play guitar was two years ago, when he was playing the Moonlight Sonata and my sister staged a big fall to bring the attention back to her. Unpleasantness ensued. That’s the last time I ever saw her, as she left town the next day and has officially “disowned” me.
Classical guitar time
Declan has never played for us again.
Geez. This took a sad turn. I don’t dwell on this stuff or sit around wondering what’s so awful about me that relatives are fleeing in droves. Stuff just happens. I’ll keep trying to be a good person and not worry about people who have problems with me and don’t want to work it out. What else can you do?
Declan still plays, though. This is Big Dallas.
I’m glad I’ve had so much music in my life. I know I’d be much different if I hadn’t learned so much about music and made so many wonderful music friends. It’s a treasured part of my life.
Sometimes, when there’s a perceived need, you do something spontaneously that you later look back on and say to yourself, “Well, THAT was an embarrassing moment!” And that happened to me today.
Image from @agus_et_al via Twenty20
It was one of those intense days at work. I’d gotten tired of waiting for help on a couple of diversity and equity volunteer things and just dove in to do them myself, which included direct-messaging a C-suite member to get a project going and having a minor hissy fit at accounts payable to get a payment made. I’m glad I got the fit of energy, and truly understood that people are extra busy and have stuff going on in their own lives that may make MY priorities not theirs! But my adrenaline was up.
Then some other work stuff went on that entailed me getting news about more changes coming up (hey, we’re Agile!) and then having to pass said news on to my team in a good change-management fashion, looking at the positive (always a challenge for someone with a personality quirk of immediately seeing the worst in something and uttering the F-word). And of course, the coworker for whom this news would be most unwelcome had to be the first one I ended up talking to.
Here’s my news, coworker! Take notes! Image by @mcirillo1961 via Twenty20
I was telling the news to my colleague, who I’d been on-ramping for a little over a month and been working really closely with, and she was expressing her doubts as to whether she’d be great at her new thing or whether she’d enjoy it. Out of the blue, I went into Mary Poppins mode and, yes, I, who’ve lost my voice, launched vigorously into one of the first songs I ever learned in my whole life:
In every job that must be done there is an element of fun. You find the fun and -snap- the job’s a game. Then every task you undertake becomes a piece of cake A lark, a spree, it’s very clear to see… That a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down!
Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman.
Yes. In a Zoom meeting, I sang a Julie Andrews song to someone whose parents weren’t even born when I toddled into a darkened theater and saw my very first movie, Disney’s Mary Poppins. With hand gestures. Oy. Potential career-limiting moment! (Here’s a link to the original; a version that I can share is below.)
To my coworker’s credit, she lit up, agreed, and said I should blog that. So, I did. I probably actually made a good point, because one of the things I’ve been telling new hires and people new to being members of an Agile team is that, in the planning meetings for each quarter, you need to find something that not only fits in with what your team’s been asked to do, but that you and the team can have fun doing. Make it educational, where you learn a new skill! Make it fun, because you’re collaborating with interesting people! Make it fulfilling, because you’re creating something that will be useful!
We just hold each other up like a big ole umbrella – good tactic for coworkers, friends, family, and community members at large! Image by @holypunkface via Twenty20
Yeah, just call me the team’s personal Mary Poppins. And by the way, I am grateful that while I work to keep my team’s spirits up, they do such a great job at keeping mine up as well. Everyone should be so lucky!
The Hermits' Rest 